Unrequited Love
by Eos Blaze 0402
Summary: set after 3X15, eternity can be too painful and damned too long if you only have regrets and unrequited love for company. the promise of always and forever can be too aching... please give it a shot.


_UNREQUITED LOVE_

This is what betrayal felt like. Elijah hadn't thought he was ever gonna taste this particular emotion again, but here he was centuries later, the only difference was that this time he had been on delivering end.

Family above all, where had that taken him? Centuries after centuries same old paranoid Nicklaus, always thinking somebody was conspiring against him, Rebecca who gave her heart too easily and got it broken, Kol taking every aspect of his life as a joke, and he couldn't say much about Finn.

And then there was time when Nicklaus daggered most of them and kept them locked in boxes.

What had family given him? Except for anger, despair and unresolved feuds.

His happiness had never mattered, every time he had dared to hope, somebody had to come and take it.

So he had left that optimism behind, put a strong wall of stones around his heart and had cloaked himself in mask.

Everything had been going okay, he was drifting comfortably, away from Nicklaus and his crazy ideas of conspiracy and world domination, and then he had heard about her.

Katarina's doppelganger.

He hadn't believed it, so he had decided to check it out. After all if it was Katarina, he could have his satisfaction of watching her burn, or more like satisfaction of ripping her heart out.

So he had gone to meet Rose and then he had seen her.

Elena.

The same face, the same eyes, the same lips and a beating heart.

Witchcraft, sorcery, numerous things had run through his mind. So he had gone close, confident in the wall of stone around his heart that had made him moral yet uncaring.

And he had committed his first mistake of looking in her eyes, those doe eyes of Katarina that had bewitched him the moment he had seen her.

But these eyes were different, they were the same, yet there was courage along with fear, a determination to face what was coming, emotions that he was sure Katarina had never felt.

So he had leant, taken in her smell- the subtle fragrance of freesias and lavender, so different from heavy aroma of roses.

And for a moment his eyes had drifted to her lips, and this insane idea of kissing that soft mouth had crossed his mind.

Damn the Petrovas.

He had wanted to kill her for making him feel things he hadn't felt in very long time.

He had gotten a way to finish Nicklaus that day for all the slights he had ever committed against the family and he had wanted to take her away.

He hadn't known that day why he had a feeling that she was different from Katarina.

He had killed Trevor in front of her; he had expected her to run. She had flinched but she had stood her ground.

From her posture it was evident that she was used to vampires around her. What had this young girl seen in her life? He had been so curious.

And then they had come, descended like pair of flies circling around tasty morsel.

The Salvatore's.

He had known them by reputation.

One too impulsive, too rash Damon Salvatore.

He had known Stefan Salvatore as the ripper of Chicago, when too guilty he reverted on his bunny diet.

He assumed it was bunny diet regime; otherwise this girl wouldn't have survived meting ripper.

They had came to save her from him, when it was too obvious she needed saving from them.

He had played along, gotten distracted and staked.

But he had found that day; Elena was far too different from Katarina or Tatia for the matter of fact.

The first look, the first time he ever met her, the first time he heard her voice, it was all etched in his mind. He caressed her name, Elena. Light, his light, his beacon that would never be his.

He didn't know when he had started to love her, when every beat of her heart had become a mirror of his missing ones, when her smiles had become best part of his day, when he had hung like a love sick fool to hear a word from her lips.

And how he had wanted to kiss that mouth, those soft lips where he could lose himself, where he could forget a world existed outside her warm embrace.

His face remained a mask of indifference, or mild curiosity but behind it his mind would construct elaborate fantasies of her hands on his skin, her lips on his. A panorama of her beautiful body beneath, above, around his. Skin meeting skin, flesh meeting flesh, hearts beating in symmetric image.

Dreams, fantasies that's what they were, and always would be.

She had Salvatore's to choose from, and he had his family.

But just for a moment of weakness he could admit that he wanted her for himself, he wanted to steal her from world and keep her safe where no one could hurt her, and he seethed with rage when he saw her kissing Stefan Salvatore.

He wanted all her kisses, her every touch, every word.

He wanted her with a passion that surpassed the boundaries of obsession, but he couldn't have her.

This was the price he paid for his family. His happiness was the cost of his love for his family.

And today he had betrayed her, betrayed her in the worst possible way anyone could betray another.

He had broken a promise he had made to himself, to always protect Elena Gilbert when he had left her to die with his sister.

His heart was broken, torn into pieces.

To protect his family he had forsaken his love.

There were things he hadn't written in the letter, like how much he loved her.

But she had suffered enough on hands of him and his family.

He owed this to her.

He had failed to protect her from Nicklaus; almost all of her remaining family was dead because of his family.

Her compassion wasn't a gift; it was an intricate part of her soul which was a part of her.

She would never forsake it as he had isolated his heart.

How he wanted to write that one thing that he valued most was her, but he couldn't.

In his own miserable company all his masks slipped, and he was just a man. A man who loved yet his heart was of a coward.

She deserved better. She deserved a life where she could have everything she wanted.

He would go away, far too away from here where he could no longer smell her lavender scent, where he couldn't see the flush on her cheeks.

He would forever be alone, his regret his only company because he had killed his chance of happiness.

He would carry his regret as he would carry his love for her,

Always and forever…


End file.
